The elevated presidential campaign of ideas, fleetingly achieved after months of mudslinging, died Tuesday.

It was three days old.

Pundits and politicians expressed optimism Saturday that Mitt Romney’s introduction of Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate signaled the two campaigns would gather themselves for an adult conversation about the nation’s future and the complex problems America faces, lifting a year-old contest filled with small-minded sniping. Romney drew a wave of praise for his “bold” choice, and President Barack Obama promised voters will choose between “two fundamentally different visions of how America became great and how it’s going to stay great.”

But by Tuesday evening, it was clear the 2012 campaign has resumed its regularly scheduled attacks — and even intensified them.

Vice President Joe Biden warned during a morning rally in Danville, Va., that Romney would return to a deregulated Wall Street, sparking a debate about his inflammatory word choice. “Look at what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street,” Biden said. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

Republican denunciations of Biden’s use of the word “chains” ricocheted across the Internet. By day’s end, Romney accused Obama of basing his campaign on “hate.”

“Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America,” Romney told an evening crowd in Chillicothe, Ohio.

“This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don’t hear any answers coming from President Obama’s reelection campaign. … This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like. He won’t win that way.”

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt fired back with a statement that Romney’s “comments tonight seemed unhinged, and particularly strange coming at a time when he’s pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads that are demonstrably false."

Before that volley, Biden addressed the hours of pushback from Romney’s team, which dubbed his comments “not acceptable in our political discourse.” Speaking mid-afternoon in Wytheville, Va., the vice president modified his language, replacing “in chains” with “in shackles” and adding that House Republicans have claimed their economic plans would “unshackle” the economy.

“I am told,” Biden said, “when I made that comment earlier today in Danville, Va., the Romney campaign put out a tweet, put out a tweet, went on the air, went on the airwaves saying, ‘Biden was outrageous in saying’ — I think I said, instead of unshackled, unchained — ‘outrageous to say that!’”

While the campaigns traded attacks and rebuttals over Biden’s comment Tuesday afternoon, the presidential candidates swerved off the high road.

On day two of a three-day bus trip across Iowa, Obama joked three separate times about Romney’s roof-riding dog Seamus. He knocked Romney for not supporting wind energy during speeches in Oskaloosa, Marshalltown and Waterloo, repeating a Romney criticism that one cannot “drive a car with a windmill on it.”

“Now, I don’t know if he’s actually tried that,” Obama said. “I know he’s had other things on his car.”

Romney, stumping at an Ohio coal mine, slammed Biden for asserting in 2007 that more Americans will die from coal-related pollution than from terrorist attacks.

Biden “said coal is more dangerous than terrorists,” Romney told a crowd in Beallsville, Ohio. “Can you imagine that?”

“This tells you precisely what he actually feels and what he’s done and his policies over the last 3 1/2 years have put in place — the very vision he had when he was running for office,” Romney added.

But that line is based off of an interview in which Bill Maher asked Biden what is “more likely to contribute to the death of your average American” among terrorist attacks, coal-sooted air or high-fructose corn syrup.

Biden responded then: “Air that has too much coal in it, corn syrup next, then a terrorist attack, but that is not to diminish in any way the fact that a terrorist attack is real. It is not an existential threat to bringing down the country, but it does have the capacity still to kill thousands of people. But hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants and because of corn syrup.”

An Obama campaign official said Romney has no footing to attack Biden on coal.

“Mitt Romney said that coal-fired plants kill people,” the official said. “He has no credibility attacking anyone on this topic.”

Ryan jumped into the fray Tuesday as well. Campaigning at a high school in Lakewood, Colo., Ryan was interrupted by a man who yelled that Ryan was speaking without a teleprompter, a return to the GOP short-hand that the president is capable only of reading words put before him. Ryan laughed.

“That’s right,” he said. “Just for the rest of you, he said, ‘Look, no teleprompter.’ Heh.”

Operatives in the Obama and Romney camps blamed each other for the demise of the tenor of the campaign. GOP strategist Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush adviser, told POLITICO’s Maggie Haberman that Romney could lose because Obama’s team will seek to drive a wedge between his plans and Ryan’s.

“I think Romney-Ryan will now be largely a crash course on budget economics and realities. And I’m not sure voters are ready for the truth,” McKinnon said. “The GOP campaign for the presidency is likely to be about hard truths. If voters are ready for an honest assessment of where our nation finds itself, Romney-Ryan can win. It’s just a very big if.”

The two campaigns began the day with yet another round of TV ads attacking each other. Obama accused Romney of planning to eliminate some federal college tuition aid while Romney continued his assault claiming Obama cut Medicare to pay for his health care law. Both sides accused the other of stretching the truth in their ads.

When Obama exhumed the campaign’s dog wars, it marked a clear deviation from Monday’s focus on Ryan and his congressional record.

And Romney’s defenders, sick of hearing references to Seamus’s Boston-to-Canada ride on the roof of the family station wagon, lashed back at Obama, invoking his admission in “Dreams from My Father” that “I was introduced to dog meat” while a child living in Indonesia.

“Obama campaign about small things — accusing Romney of being a felon & murderer,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus wrote on Twitter. “Next thing you know, they’ll accuse Romney of eating a dog.”

Romney spokesman Ryan Williams called Obama’s joke “unpresidential.”

“After sanctimoniously complaining about making a ‘big election about small things,’ President Obama continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with his unpresidential behavior,” Williams said. “This election is about creating jobs, turning around our economy and helping the middle class. The president’s policies have failed on all counts and he will do anything to distract from his abysmal record.”

The Romney campaign pushed back even harder on Biden’s “chains” remark.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul delivered a press release broadside against Biden — without saying exactly what the source of her outrage was. A different aide later confirmed she was addressing his earlier comment.

“After weeks of slanderous and baseless accusations leveled against Gov. Romney, the Obama campaign has reached a new low,” Saul said. “The comments made by the vice president of the United States are not acceptable in our political discourse and demonstrate yet again that the Obama campaign will say and do anything to win this election. President Obama should tell the American people whether he agrees with Joe Biden’s comments.”

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter then supported Biden’s comments on MSNBC. “We have no problem with those comments — those in the full context of them.”

“I appreciate the faux outrage from the Romney campaign but if you want to talk about the use of words, then take a look at Mitt Romney’s stump speech where he basically calls the president un-American,” Cutter said. “Does Andrea Saul agree with that language?”

Cutter later released a statement calling for a “return to that ‘substantive’ debate Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promised 72 hours ago but quickly abandoned.”

No memorial service is scheduled for the death of the high-minded campaign. In lieu of flowers, both Obama and Romney will continue soliciting for campaign contributions.